Everyone Alive Wants Answers Does gender inform music making? It's a tricky question when talking about electronic music, since so few women are involved in it, and its monikered...Everyone Alive Wants Answers Does gender inform music making? It's a tricky question when talking about electronic music, since so few women are involved in it, and its monikered...2003-12-19

Does gender inform music making? It’s a tricky question when talking about electronic music, since so few women are involved in it, and its monikered makers usually hide behind their machines. But like the best of her female peers – England’s Neotropic and Holland’s Solex – France’s Colleen, a.k.a. Cecile Schott, has an affinity for odd samples, and makes music with a peculiar warmth one might describe as womblike. Harps, bells, birds, record-surface noise, and gossamer synth textures swarm through wordless, loop-driven compositions that are nearly ambient. The beauty is in the timbres and the subtle shifts of color; it’s like watching the sun play off the leaves on a fall day. MORE ELECTRO PSYCHEDELIA Four Tet’s new 12-inch single of ”As Serious as Your Life” – the best track off his brilliant Rounds – has a 23-minute version of the song that seems to begin in a temple, pass through a steel foundry, then proceed to chop a funky harpsichord into digital splinters.